Kwame's rise to fame

You probably know Kwame Kwei-Armah as either the bloke who drives the ambulance in Casualty, or because of Celebrity Fame Academy. In the latter, the 35-year-old sang You Are The Sunshine Of My Life so brilliantly that everyone was convinced he would win, although in the end he didn't.

Now he is a celebrity, giving interviews and discussing record offers. One writer, trying to find something to criticise him for, said he was so nice he was like human Valium.

He certainly seemed normal compared to the rest of the bunch, but that included Ruby Wax, Jo Brand, John Thomson and Ulrika Jonsson. "I went in there as the least well-known," he says. "And what was interesting was that I could look at these people I'd been exposed to via the media and go, 'Wow, you're actually like that'. Before I did the show I admit I didn't like Ulrika. I had a one-dimensional view of her - -that she was a free-spirited blonde bombshell stealing other people's men.

"But I found her to be erudite and funny. She's tremendously bright and, if she's guilty of anything, it's of analysing how she is seen and going, 'That's what I will market about myself '."

Kwame attacks his duck confit - we are at the Electric Club in Notting Hill - and I ask if Fame Academy demystified the famous for him, but he shakes his head. "No, because I did a film [Il Mio West, a minor Italian comedy] with David Bowie and Harvey Keitel five years ago, and at the time Bowie had just floated himself on the Stock Exchange.

"He was worth millions and I wasn't working much and my wife and I were separating - I was in a low place and very broke. And we would sit and talk for hours about literature. He's a tremendously well-read man, a really beautiful person and I found him incredibly wise. Bowie's wife, Iman, was flying in at the end of the shoot and he invited me to go to Venice with them. But I said, 'No, I've got to go back to work'."

I sit up. He said what? Kwame bursts out laughing. "Because I didn't have any money, man! So I invented this important audition I had to get back for because I didn't want it to seem as if I was asking him to sub me."

But Kwame was used to being poor. He grew up in Southall, west London, where his father was a welder in the Quaker Oats factory and his mother worked nights as a nurse and days as a kindergarten teacher to put his brother through public school - Kwame and his two sisters went to state school. This sounds like his childhood was grim. In fact, he says, it was drenched in love. He paints a picture of a sunshiny world where relatives lived in each other's houses, swapped food from the factories they worked in (Wall's, McVitie's), and pooled money.

In this cosy atmosphere Naomi Campbell, rather bizarrely, shared his sister's bedroom. They went to the same school, and she was, he says, like family. He giggles when I ask if he fancied her.

"Hell no. She was just Naomi. She would spend most weekends at my house. I've known her all my life." I ask if it was obvious she would do so well and he hesitates, trying to put it politely. "Well, Naomi was a pretty girl. But her mother Valerie is beautiful. So, it was a surprise, I've got to be honest, that she turned out to be one of the most beautiful women in the world. She was five years younger than me, and when you're 15 that's a huge amount."

He is extremely close to his mother, Theresa. He even married at 23 because it was what she had done. But the marriage didn't work out. Fyna, his ex-wife, works in local education, and is bringing up Kwame junior and their seven-year-old twins, Kofi and Oni. "We grew apart," Kwame says when I ask what went wrong. "I'm sad that we're not together - I'd have loved to have been in a traditional family. But I'm overjoyed with the relationship I now have."

He met his girlfriend, Michelle, when she was on the checkout of his local Sainsbury's. He thought she was amazingly beautiful, and asked her out. They live in the Muswell Hill flat he bought so that his oldest son would grow up in the school's catchment area. "I call her my healer, because after the break-up of my marriage, she was so kind and nurturing. I can come home and rest my head. That's all you can really ask."

Yet, talking to Kwame is unsettling, because while he can chat easily about fame and celebrities, most of his conversation is about a totally different subject - the world he grew up in, of crime and violence and drugs. Even the way he talks veers wildly - from educated English to indecipherable slang. He says most of the kids on his street went to borstal.

"I remember, when I was 12, being kicked in the back by a police officer going: 'Come on, you black bastard, just give me a reason to arrest you.' One of my best friends ending up selling drugs, committing burglary, going in and out of prison. Last year they found him in his mother's bathtub. He'd been dead three days. Where I am now is but a small increment from where he is. He went a bit that way and I went a bit the other."

Kwame left school with two A-levels. After failing in his dream to become a pop star, he woke up on his 25th birthday and decided to become an actor.

He got a small role in Cutthroat Island with Geena Davis. Then nothing happened for ages. In 1998, the year he almost shared a gondola with Bowie, he also landed a small part in Holby City.

The year after that he got the role of Finlay in Casualty. At the same time he was developing his writing, and in 2000 he did a stint as writer in residence at Bristol Old Vic.

Four of his plays were performed there, which led to the National Theatre Studio offering him a "computer and an office and telling me to just write". The result is Elmina's Kitchen, which opens this month.

He says it was inspired by a car chase. "I was driving along Lower Clapton Road and this new BMW was wrapped around a lamppost with two young black men dying in the front seat. I didn't know what to do with my rage, so I started writing it down.

The play is set in a West Indian restaurant on Murder Mile in Hackney. It's about a father trying to prevent his son getting involved in Yardie culture. My own son is going to be 11 next month and I'm worried. The other day we were walking through Wood Green and all of a sudden he started walking with a bounce and pulled his trousers down so his underpants were showing.

I said to him: 'What are you doing?' He said, 'Ooh, Dad, we're in a bad-man area. If I don't carry myself in a certain way, anything can happen'. And that was true. I said: 'The most important thing is that you are yourself. The moment you start faking, people see through it'."

It is with his son in mind that Kwame is supporting Rizer, a Government website to cut youth crime that offers young offenders information about the law and the courts. "I wish it had been there when I was a kid," he says.

"When I was growing up, you couldn't make it as a singer outside the reggae scene, and if you weren't an athlete and wanted the bling-bling life, almost the only road open to you was becoming a criminal. Education is the only thing that helped me succeed." And, of course, the odd bit of reality TV.

www.rizer.co.uk is launched 13 May. Elmina's Kitchen is at the National Theatre from 23 May; box office: 020 7452 3000.